In addition to 331 residential units, the development would also yield over 32,000 square feet of new ground floor retail space, a garage for 163 cars and 162 bikes, and various streetscape and plaza improvements as previously proposed but likely to be refined.

Comments from Plugged-In Readers

This is one of the premier drug, crime, and rat infested corners of San Francisco. It has significant historical relevance and should be preserved as-is. The fact that San Francisco is in desperate need of housing should not result in any changes to this special corner of the Mission.

You are so right. I would feel as if the money I spent on a personal taser and pepper spray was wasted if I could wait for a bus or enter the Muni station on this corner when a project like this had made it clean and safe. I hope that never happens and the funky, nasty old San Francisco remains frozen in time forever.

To whom/where can we send letters of support for this project? 100% Market Rate please.
Would love to see this crime infested gritty corner cleaned up, but that may never happen w/ all the surrounding SRO’s, where the folks that live in those places have no living space, the the owners have their hands tied by the City.

Perhaps it would help us move forward if journalists stopped using the incendiary and misleading language of development opponents. Just this week I have been very frustrated to see multiple sources use words such as “Manhattanization” and “Monster” to describe reasonable developments. These are just dog whistles for the anti-development forces that have created this mess we are currently dealing with.

Agreed. The tone of the stories and perspective that sources showcase are as toxic as the NIMBY rhetoric itself.

I think it’s actually become a kind of San Francisco brand of news—complaining and dog whistling. I’m totally drained by all of the idealism and distraction. We really need a better, clearer vision, with viable goals, and actionable plans to execute.

Tired of looking at an empty burger king and an empty bar on the corner. Let’s build housing so that the community can flourish. The reputation of MEDA and Calle 24 is at all time low. With the # of developments in SF under construction at all time low – expect the Unions and laborers to come out for this project.

The issue is that the project is the same developer as Parkmerced (Maximus) same Architect team SOM, and same song and dance as prior, with zero public infrastructure improvements (transit) and a ton of impacts un-addressed by the development team. The project is only for entitlements, and than they will sell it off to let someone else build it but retain a portion for their pocketbooks.

Wont help any affordability. Wont help any change in the process, or what is being built, and will only embolden developers to pave over every single story site and intersection adjacent to transit regardless of the impacts to people, and any existing community groups.

SOM should focus these developments with Maximus outside the city, and push for these types of developments with new transit lines, where it is not currently located, Like Milbrae BART station near the airport. Don’t ruin all city blocks in SF with density and skyward developments that ignore who is building it and for what purpose besides “green-$-greed”. They tout the environmental side, but if you get in the weeds of the proposal it is far from green and impacts the community drastically.

Care to elaborate on what sort of infrastructure (transit) responsibilities the developer is supposed to follow through on, on a project that sits directly above a mass transit station? Also, please share your thoughts (or facts) on what “environmental sides” the project team is touting.

A) the current location at Bart and mission differs from the 19th ave location. But like Van Mess ave and Market more influx of people without transit changes is ludicrous. The van ness BRT should have extended further south and is taking way too much money away from other transit fixed outside the downtown.

B) SOM always tours the “green” of their projects like parkmerced and this one as well. But the demolition of buildings is far from a green solution and takes years to recoup the carbon impacts.

Was at all the prior Maximus meetings prior with Rosania and Seth Mallen from Stellar. This project should be transported out towards a major low scale unurbanized area…. how about Near Sacramento? We have too much housing being pumped in that is un-affordable to the existing community.

Green is not greed when you are angling for more taxes or fundraising for non profits. Society screeches to a halt without money. By the way if you make money, you don’t have to [depend] on the government subsidies. Geed is just slander, over used by people who can’t bother to pay their own way.

I’ve always had the fantasy that they’d take the Caltrain right-of-way, dig a big, deep trench and put high-speed rail at the bottom, then BART, then a streetcar or buses that stopped more often, and cover it all over with bike and pedestrian paths and line the whole thing with big apartment/retail/office blocks, especially where the ROW follows El Camino.

There is a place where fantasies of that kind come true — it’s called the People’s Republic of China.
Check out news summaries written in the past year or two about how China built out 1000’s of miles of HSR all across their territory over a span of just 1 short decade.

As much as I detest our lack of investment in transit and inability to make the sweeping changes necessary to build more housing… I’d rather be dead than live in a totalitarian, dystopian hellscape like China. One wrong word and off to the gulags you go with over a million Uighurs.

The idea that we have to choose between dictatorship that produces fast results at a terrible human cost and a democratic process that moves insufferably slow is one of the biggest and most dangerous lies there is.

This is a pretty smart play still, BART can handle this size of development and much more and there are many Muni lines going by running on the red carpet lanes. I’m not sure the streets could handle 163 new cars — trading parking spots for more units of housing would be a smarter idea.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is the real MONSTER in the Mission. A shameless hater of self enabled people… It’s just horrible people would be able pay their own bills and not be dependent on subsidies and welfare. We must not allow this deviant behavior.

If you ever want to see the excess that this type of developer builds their own offices to just stop by One Maritime Plaza. Their workplace buildout looks to be over $300 per square foot in a class A premium view highrise.

Yup, if the cars remain underground then nobody should care. But the reality is that those cars will emerge onto the surface frequently and add to congestion, slowing traffic. A dense city should care about street congestion as that resource cannot easily be expanded.

Agreed. Socketsite, part of the way narratives change is that language & terminology around them change. I suspect your loyal readership will remain loyal if you undertake a subtle shift towards characterizing new developments (of almost any kind at all) as positive, period.

“More housing is needed,” this statement has been true for many years & will remain true. The radical idealists have been hurting themselves since the 1960’s and the way to cure the problem is simply to politely decline participation in their narratives. (And to *build.*)

This corner is a cultural treasure. The vacant lot is where Sir Walter Raleigh 1st encountered the Ohlone Indians… The shuttered Burger King is where the Whopper was invented. The Dollar Store sells irreplaceable plastic crap from China. And since MEDA and Calle 24 won’t ever take ‘Yes’ for an answer. Why bother….? Not that I think they’re reasonable to begin with….

Oh hell…. Please just leave it as it is. A festering, disgusting pustule of urban decay in the middle of the most expensive city in The World. (Or one of the most expensive….) UUgh

The UN CALLED THE BAY AREA HOMELESS CRISIS A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION. If developers are not allowed to build new housing for the demand other developers will take 100-year-old existing housing stock kick out the tenants and renovate it to a modern standard. Our population is increasing at a rapid rate that we can’t control and change is inevitable. If we don’t allow housing to be built were just creating the problem, not the solution.